Ptkay,
I have listened to the tapes and watched the Radar replays - you obviously have not otherwise you would not state
but in my opinion NEVER had problems with understanding the ATC.
The communications were very confused throughout. You also state/ask
And by the way: what kind of standard ICAO communication lines is:
"What do you think is your heading ??"
AFAIK it should be
"XXX give your altitude and heading"
Unfortunately there is only a finite amount of phraseology which is there to cover most circumstances - however it is not exhaustive.
Reverting to plain English is the most sensible thing to do, especially in an emergency situation, instead of trying to shoe horn an unusual situation into standard phraseology that has not been designed to cover it!
If there is ever a circumstance that is not covered by ICAO phraseology, or the crew/ATC just do not seem to understand; then talking plain, non technical English is an extremely wise idea.
The Crew were under a lot of pressure, but - and this may come as news to you - the ATCO was also under pressure and a little stressed - he may not have used the best phrasing when trying to use plain English, but at least he tried... if you listen to the R/T (merely reading a transcript does not give you any idea of how it actually was) then you will know that understanding ATC and passing a coherent message when asked was very much a problem the crew had.
The newspapers may well have sensationalised some aspects of this incident but the fact is, for whatever reason, the crew did not communicate effectively - this could be down to a number of factors, stress and confusion are probably the main ones.
It's all very well sitting a test in benign conditions - it's a lot different trying to reach the required level when you have a lot of other things going on - it is perfectly understandable that a non native English speakng person will start to stumble over a foreign language.
Although I totally disagree with you regarding the fact you believe there was no communication problem (the AAIB is not xenophobic, it is a very well respected organisation), and also the fact that you think everything can be communicated using standard ICAO phraseology, I will say that there were certain things that the ATCO said tha could have been phrased better or properly - for example using 'Three hundred' instead of 'three zero zero degrees' then talking about a heading.